


they say you want a war (but who are you fighting for)

by bittereternity



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash, based on the s3 teaser, moustache
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You would have died and this flat would have been empty and I would have come back to your stained teacups and your leftover curry in the fridge and I couldn't, John, the mere idea was utterly unacceptable.” Victory wasn't supposed to feel like this, like shards of glass sticking into his heart, bleeding elbows from shreds of conversations that never go anywhere, and a bitter taste of <i>regretloveguiltloveregret</i> in his mouth.</p><p>Sherlock returns and once again, throws John's life off-kilter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they say you want a war (but who are you fighting for)

*

You do not have to unburden your soul for everyone;  it will be enough if you do that for those you love.

Albert Camus

*

The first thing that comes out of John’s mouth, almost without his own volition, is a strangled, whispered: “ _What_?”

Technically, it is possible that he’s hallucinating. It is unlikely, however; he’d had a fairly good amount of sleep, woken up in the morning without the remnants of a nightmare behind his eyes, opened the door in the morning, bleary eyed and half-asleep, with nothing but the singular thought of retrieving his newspaper. It is possible that he’s hallucinating but the terrifying, more realistic possibility dawns on him only a second later: that he _isn’t_.

“What?” he repeats for the second time, and the figure in front of him moves just a little and he rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and _sees_. Sherlock Holmes stands in front of him in all his glory, looking for all the world like he’s just come back from a case, attired in an immaculately tailored suit with a slight crinkle at the bridge of his nose. And yet, and yet, there are things about him that John doesn’t recognize: the purple spots on his left cheek, the dullness in his hair, the mostly-healed gash taking up most of his right forearm, the extra lines at the corners of his eyes, the fresh, not-quite healed puncture marks on his arms, the perpetual, involuntary downwards turn of his mouth.

John observes because Sherlock had taught him how to, and the man in front of him is all flesh and bones and smelling slightly of standard airline shampoo and stale coffee, slight traces of dirt under his nails that clearly hadn’t washed off despite repetitive attempts, eyes alive and bright and so very, very _unsure—_

_Oh, Sherlock, Sherlock, what have you done._

Sherlock takes a step forward towards him, tilts his head and squints at him and John has to purse his mouth shut and look away, try to fight the opposing sensations of a hysterical laugh and an equally hysterical sob threatening to tear away from him. Sherlock, with a slight frown gracing his forehead, takes another step towards him and appraises him from top to bottom, again and again and again like looking at him was a luxury, like he can look forever and it will still never be enough.

Sherlock clears his throat and speaks, scratchily at first, like he’s tasting the words in his mouth for the first time. “There is a thing on your face,” he tells John, pointing a finger at his moustache. “Did you know that?”

*

“Do you want a cup of tea?” Sherlock asks him, moving past him and making himself right at home in the flat like he’d never left, like all these months had merely been a hiccup in the space-time continuum.

“It _is_ my home,” the words are out of his mouth before he even nurtures a hope of saving them. In retrospect, it is mostly true; he’s painstakingly repainted, redecorated everything he could lay eyes his upon and Sherlock’s things have been long gone, packed up and moved out by Mycroft’s people during one of his shifts at the clinic. But Sherlock remains, frustratingly and constantly, in every crevice and corner of the flat, serves as a constant reminder that he would’ve never known this flat, this life if it hadn’t been for him.

To his credit, Sherlock does look up from filling the electric kettle and glances around. “You’ve renovated,” he murmurs, barely loud enough for John to hear, and turns back towards the sink.

John’s face heats up at his words, so casually thrown around over his shoulder, for a reason he can’t quite grasp. He rubs the back of his neck idly. “Yeah,” he laughs with an effort, unsteady and slightly trembling. “Yeah, I, uh, everything used to be the _same_ ,” he feels a sudden urge to _explain_ , “for a long time, that is. And then-”

Sherlock looks back at him after switching the kettle on. “I get it, John,” he waves his hands around like it’s of no consequence, his words sounding remarkably sincere without the customary snort of derision John has come to remember, associate with him always. “You went through the so-called five stages of grief and then you moved on.”

John looks up at him, startled. “Does that bother you?” he asks, part of him genuinely interested, but most of him just wanting to _take_.

Sherlock looks away, fingers thrumming slightly on his perfectly-cut trousers and the kettle clicks back to life behind them.

*

It scares John how quickly Sherlock integrates himself back to his old life. One moment, he’s alone, making a single cup of tea, washing a single plate and folding clothes for one, and he blinks, and Sherlock is there. Like he was always there, like he’d never left, like all these months in between never even happened. For the most part, it’s the same as before; Sherlock goes back to his mostly-untouched room without a word and if he notices (of course he does; wasn’t that his downfall in the end, that he saw far too much) the odd combination of musk and freshly-coated paint, he doesn’t mention it.

John doesn’t say anything, hovers on the background and tries to track every movement of his lean, now-bruised arms with his own eyes. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s looking for, maybe he’s simply waiting to wake up and see that it was all a dream, maybe he simply wants to blink and see Sherlock gone and heave a sigh of relief, maybe, maybe he just wants to sit at the sidelines and watch his life unfold like it is wont to despite his repeated protests.

*

“Is it appropriate to bring up that thing of yours now?” Sherlock asks him after merely twenty-four hour have passed since their renewed cohabitation.

John frowns. “What thing?”

“That thing. That strip of hair under your nose.”

“Oh,” John blinks, raising a hand to touch the bristles of his moustache. “My moustache, you mean?”

“Is that what that is?” John would’ve been offended had it not been for the expression of genuine, frank bewilderment so very endearingly at odds with Sherlock’s more natural expressions.

“It’s a moustache, Sherlock,” he repeats, a hint of past exasperation creeping into his voice.

Sherlock waves his hand a little. “Why do you have that?”

John blinks again. “I, uh, I don’t-”

“Is it to signify your successful completion of what the mainstream media vastly describes as the five stages of grief?” Sherlock cuts him off.

He slams his cup down on the table.  “Are you implying that my moustache is a symbol of celebration of how _I moved on from you_?”

Sherlock gives the tiniest of shrugs but it doesn’t quite take away the nervous tension building at the corners of his eyes. “More likely, from my fall.”

Something like a bolt of pure, hot-white rage courses through him and vaguely, he wonders why he hasn’t felt that anger before, why it has taken so long to manifest.

“Not everything,” he begins in a near-scream and trails off, takes a deep breath, runs a hand through his hair. “Not everything is about you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock opens his mouth but John is faster. “I don’t have to talk to you about this.” And a second later, more forceful around the bitter taste of truth in his mouth: “I don’t have to talk to you about any of this.”

Sherlock closes off in front of his own eyes, his face morphing into a terrifying neutral expression. John watches, yet can’t quite pinpoint which of his words may have caused such a reaction.

“No, you don’t,” Sherlock agrees, and then there’s nothing more to say.

*

The only things that change are the most insignificant, so random and scattered across the chart that John can’t quite plot a graph out of them. Sherlock doesn’t ask him anything anymore, doesn’t badger, doesn’t criticize, even when John purposely types at snail’s speed on his laptop or forgets to bring the milk. Sherlock doesn’t eat, much like before, but when John offers him a plate or a carton of Chinese he takes it without protest and finishes it. And sometimes, sometimes out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sherlock giving him a _look_ , sharp and carefully neutral and purposeful all at once.

Maybe, John thinks, he’s waiting for something too, for John to blow up or leave or punch him in the face. The company of a man he had once craved hovers over him, oppressive and a cruel reminder that he has gotten his wish at last, a wish for Sherlock to return that leaves him suffocated now that he sees it materializing in front of his eyes. Nevertheless, he doesn’t say a word and watches in something akin to frustration as Sherlock follows his lead.

*

“Do you want me to leave?” He spits out finally. “Move out? Find a place of my own now that you’re back?”

Sherlock looks up at him from the couch, where he had been typing on his laptop, – his own, never John’s anymore, no matter how many times John not-quite-so accidentally forgets to take it back up to his room—half-startled at the sound of his voice.

“Do you want me to leave?” John repeats again.

Sherlock gives him _that look_ for a second, lips slightly parted and a breath not yet exhaled in his chest. Abruptly, he stands up, letting his laptop fall back perilously on the couch and stalks to his room with his dressing gown billowing behind him, slamming the door on his way in.

John sighs.

*

The thing is,  Sherlock returns much like he leaves:  a loud _thud_ and then the ground reverberates once, twice, again, first at impact and then at the vibrations resounding from John’s screams, leaving behind a fog of dust and ashes and murmurs of people attempting to repress their innate curiosities. And once again, much like before, John is left at the sidelines, elbowing his way through the crowd of fog and confusion and stale cigarettes and sweat, elbowing his way through a plethora of obstacles, shouting at the top of his voice all the way through in a desperate plea: _he’s my friend, let me through._

*

The first call from Lestrade comes exactly two weeks after his return and John would’ve almost, almost chalked it up to coincidence if he hadn’t known better.

“Are you coming, John?” Sherlock turns to face him after a few words with Lestrade. With a pang, John realizes that this is the first time they’ve spoken in two whole days. The ache in his chest intensifies when he realizes how long it’s been since he’d heard that particular line, longer still since Sherlock had said _John_ with that particular lilt to his voice.

He clears his throat. “No, I, uh,” he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I have to – there’s a thing at the, uh, there’s a thing at the pub.”

Sherlock buttons his coat. “Ah,” is all he says.

“Yeah,” John continues in a half-strangled voice.  “You know, I’m sure you don’t need me, you know, I’m out of practice and you’re,” he waves his hand around in a little flail, mortification seeping in through every pore.

Sherlock joins his palms together in front of his chest like he’s praying. “Of course,” he replies in a monotone, eyes far, far away from the conversation.

“I’ll only be slowing you down,” John offers the worst explanation of his life.

Something in his words snaps Sherlock out of his momentary trance. “Right,” he says, and looks at John’s lips for a second before meeting his eyes. John looks away,

“Right,” Sherlock repeats again, tightens his coat around him and then he’s gone. John takes a deep breath and lets himself slump down the wall closest to the door.

*

He wakes with a jerk and a massive knot on his shoulder as the light in the living room is abruptly switched on.

John blinks and instinctively reaches for a non-existent gun before staring blearily at the 11 o’clock news currently airing on television. He rubs his eyes and looks up again, only to see Sherlock looming over him, still in his coat and scarf.

He looks up. “I fell asleep,” he feels the need to inform.

“What happened to the thing at the pub?”

John sighs and moves to a corner of the sofa, an unspoken gesture of request for Sherlock to come sit down next to him. Sherlock does, surprising both of them.

Sherlock looks at him, sideways. “The thing at the pub?” he prompts.

John rubs his eyes. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock leaps up as suddenly as he had sat down. “What, John, _what_?” He paces the length of the room a few times before coming to a stop in front of him. “I have attempted to gather as much data as possible, categorize every aspect of your behavior after our impromptu reunion and I don’t get it, John. Do you know how _excruciatingly_ difficult it is for me to say that to you? I have tried to give you a recommended amount of space, I have tried to accommodate both your accelerating and decelerating response times to various behavioral variants and _nothing_. So tell me, John, _what_?”

John feels yet another spike of anger course through him, threatening to take over the course of his actions. He grits his teeth and tries to focus on calming down the thrumming of his heart against his ribcage, to relax his arms that have gone abnormally still.

When he speaks, his voice is low and calm, the words coming out stilted and slow. “You have no right,” he spits out, stalking up the few feet towards Sherlock and jabbing a finger at his chest, relishing the sharp intake of his breath. “You have _no right_ ,” he repeats again. “You have no right to come back and give me a _time frame_ to be okay with it. I am human, Sherlock, do you even know what that means? You cannot expect to condition me into being friends with you again. You are just, you, how deluded are you, you--?”

“Machine?” Sherlock supplies, equally quiet.

John feels all of the anger drain out of him in one word and then, and then he’s just tired, exhaustion seeping through his bones and making his knees weak. He raises a hand in an attempt to reach Sherlock, still rooted to the same spot, touch his face, feel the texture of his skin underneath his fingertips.

“Get some sleep, Sherlock,” he says instead, retreating his hand and twisting his fingers at his side.

*

The thing is, there is an empty, gaping hole at the base of John’s throat where his overwhelming guilt and periodic bouts of torturous grief used to be.  In the darkness of his empty bedroom, grazing his knees by the side of his bed, all he can think of is the thrumming rhythm of his anger filling him up everywhere, threatening to drown every other emotion daring to rise within him. And it would be so easy too, to be angry and punch a hole through the wall, through the foam of his pillow, drive his fist through Sherlock’s heart. But he remembers, in the most tragic and inopportune of fashion, remembers how angry he had been when Sherlock had jumped, how furious he had been at his funeral, and how it hadn’t stopped him from breaking down at his grave nonetheless.

The thing about his anger is this: it does nothing but leave him behind in the end, a bundle of nerves and frailty in his bones and an unsteady sway to his gait. It does nothing at all, but reduce marginally the constant, suffocating oppressiveness of his days bleeding into one another with a burst of adrenaline.

The thing about his anger is this: it doesn’t give him back Sherlock.

*

Sherlock stumbles out of his room the next morning, a tangle of arms and legs and dressing gown sashes and he waits patiently on the sofa, a cup of tea in hand.

“I shouldn’t have said those things to you,” he begins without preamble. “Last night.”

Sherlock squints at him. “An outsider would have taken your side,” he replies.

John clears his throat. “It wasn’t very nice of me to say those things,” he repeats.

Sherlock picks up his tea and sips at it.  A few minutes of silence and John decides to go back to reading the newspaper, mostly because he has no idea what to say next. Abruptly, Sherlock puts his tea down and swivels around, crouching down to his level next to the sofa.

“It was all for _you_ ,” Sherlock hisses at him, a slight pleading tinge to his words despite the dripping condescension. “You haven’t been moronic enough – surely you haven’t ignorantly deluded yourself to believe otherwise?”

John carefully sets his newspaper aside and  tries to take a few calming breaths. “I know,” he says, finally. He realizes the words are true the moment they leave his lips; a part of him wonders how long he’s known for certain; maybe he’d known the moment he had opened the door to see Sherlock standing there, immaculate and crisp and slightly wounded.

“It wasn’t a _vacation_ , like those tedious brochures you used to ogle at.”

“I know.”

“You could have been _killed_ , John.”

Maybe on some level, he had always known, certainty snaking through his veins and pooling at the pit of his stomach.

“I know,” he replies.

“You would have died and this flat would have been empty and I would have come back to your stained teacups and leftover curry in the fridge and I couldn’t, John, the mere idea was utterly unacceptable.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John breathes, takes a step forward. “I came back to your pajamas strewn over that chair and nicotine patches under the table, instead.” He grips Sherlock’s wrist with his own, surprised at how fragile and how bony it really is, how easy it would be to leave behind the marks of his nails. “It wasn’t _fair_ ,” is all he can say.

Sherlock flexes his fingers under his grip. “I know,” he repeats, an echo of his own words from before, and something not quite fixed in John’s heart breaks a little more at the intense concentration in his eyes, at his determination to elicit identical emotional cues. _All for you_.

“It doesn’t make it okay,” John tells him. “You coming back, it doesn’t make the fact that you left okay.”

Sherlock’s face falls like a child who has just been told that there is no Santa, that his efforts in being good for a whole year are only going to go wasted. He looks alarmingly open for a split-second. “It doesn’t?” he requires a clarification.

John looks away. “No,” he replies, but his voice shakes. “It will be, I think,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.

*

Victory wasn’t supposed to feel like this, like shards of glass sticking into his heart, bleeding elbows from shreds of conversations that never go anywhere, and a bitter taste of _regretloveguiltloveregret_ in his mouth.

*

The cases come and go, more frequently and  with more vigor than they ever used to before.  John starts accompanying Sherlock after a while, partly to kill the vivid description-laden rumors of a massive feud between them after Sherlock’s return, but mostly because he genuinely _had_ missed running around London with Sherlock’s brain as a map, missed the rush of ecstasy at the successful completion of a case, missed the way Sherlock would turn back and glance at him sideways, ask for his opinion.

And Sherlock _looks_ , stares unabashedly at him at the most inopportune of times and it scares John because no one has ever looked at him like that before, so naked and vulnerable and exuding _sheer strength_ at the same time. No one has ever looked at him like he was their whole world, and Sherlock looks and looks and looks until John swallows the lump at his throat and looks away.

*

Sherlock leaps up from the sofa he was lounging on, three days after solving a particularly harrowing case, and almost two days of absolute radio silence from the both of them. John looks up mildly and almost goes back to his book until he practically leaps up on his chair and sniffs derisively at him.

“I am so _tired_ ,” Sherlock announces with a flourish, “with this ridiculously artificial façade of domesticity that we’re constructing here.”

John marks the page in his book and sets it aside, something akin to laughter bubbling to the surface of this throat, and for a while he feels like he’s flying, soaring higher, higher because _this_ -

“No more,” Sherlock announces magnanimously, swatting his hands about like he’s protecting himself from flies. “No. More.”

“Well,” John meets his gaze. “I’m going to shave off my moustache.”

Sherlock’s smile, true and jagged and mismatched, lights up the whole room.

*

“It wasn’t _my_ thing for you,” he tells Sherlock as he lathers his upper lip with shaving foam. Sherlock hovers around the edges of the bathroom, a reflection at the farthest angle of his mirror. “The moustache, I mean.”

“You should’ve gotten a tattoo instead,” Sherlock quips.

He breathes out a laugh, nervous and shaky and a few drops of condensed foam fall on his tongue. “Well, I guess it was supposed to be _not_ you, the moustache,” he allows and then pauses before continuing, “which, I guess, _would_ make it about you.”

Sherlock waves his hand again in a gesture of indifference. He turns around, razor in hand. “We can’t go back, you know that right? This doesn’t,” he shuffles his feet, feeling ridiculous with all the foam on his face. “We can’t go back.”

Sherlock takes a step inside the bathroom and gently holds the razor under his nose, close enough that he can feel of the coolness of the metal without it making contact with his skin. “Don’t be tedious, John,” he half-whispers, his tone vivaciously affectionate despite his words. “Going back is a _highly_ illogical turn of events. _”_

*

No one has quite loved him like that before, with an all-encompassing kind of devotion that leaves him breathless, weak at his knees. No one has loved him like that before, loved him enough to destroy themselves, give up their identity for a fragile assurance that he might just be breathing and living and _existing_.

John has never had anyone love him like this before; love him enough to burn the world down, wrap it in the palm of his hands and offer it up to him as a present.

*

The next morning, John wakes up to a pounding of fists on his door. He sits up blearily, wide-eyed and distracted and half retrieving his gun from the bedside drawer before Sherlock’s voice floats through.

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock’s voice is the epitome of condescending irritation. “Where on earth have you hidden your charger? You should be more responsible, John, and make sure your laptop is charged appropriately. It is highly inconvenient for it to switch off when I’m in the middle of making a new post.” A pause. “John, are you even listening?”

John slumps back on the bed, feeling something lifting, little by little, from his chest as he feels that familiar, old sense of exasperation wash over him. He pulls the blankets over his head, vaguely listening to Sherlock stomping down the stairs as abruptly as he’d come up. He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep, a hint of a smile playing at his lips.

*

**Author's Note:**

> title adapted from: _champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends_ by FOB.  
>  this is the first thing that i've written with a mostly-linear timeline. um. yay? hope you like it!


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